Homegrown stars rare for Missouri soccer team

David Briggs

Thursday

Oct 28, 2010 at 12:01 AMOct 28, 2010 at 11:57 AM

When Missouri’s soccer team hosted sixth-ranked Texas A&M this month, Steve Pecher and a group of his former players at one of the top amateur clubs in St. Louis attended the match with great interest.

Missouri at Iowa State, 6:30 p.m.

Not because they knew anyone on the Tigers. Pecher couldn’t recall the last player from St. Louis Scott Gallagher to play at Missouri.

Rather, he came to support a club alum starring for the visitors. Alyssa Mautz, a senior forward from O’Fallon who is third in the Big 12 with 11 goals, assisted on Texas A&M’s first two scores in the Aggies’ 4-2 victory over MU.

“We’ve had more players play at Texas A&M over the last eight to 10 years,” Pecher said, “than we’ve had play at Mizzou.”

Though Pecher’s perspective is perhaps shaped by personal experience because Missouri did not recruit his daughter — Tressa Pecher played for Saint Louis University from 2001-04 — the director of Missouri girls at Scott Gallagher said area coaches noticed the disparity.

“It’s talked about,” he said. “Not the Texas A&M thing. But it is talked about, ‘Why don’t more players end up going to Missouri?’ ”

As Missouri is enjoying its most successful stretch in the program’s 15-year history, a peculiar trend has emerged.

The Tigers are the defending Big 12 champions and would secure their fourth straight winning conference season with a victory in tomorrow’s season finale at Iowa State, but they are doing it without many players from Missouri.

The 23-member team includes three natives of the Show-Me State, the fewest number of in-state players fielded by the league’s 11 teams. While seven conference soccer teams rely on at least 10 players from within their state‘s borders, MU has not fielded a roster with more than six players from Missouri since 2005.

For a power-conference program situated between Kansas City and St. Louis, a city once regarded as the nation’s soccer capital, the numbers are difficult to understand for many of the state’s soccer insiders. Many club coaches believe the trend reflects only Missouri Coach Bryan Blitz’s ability to recruit nationally and, as the Tigers’ three high-profile in-state recruits from the Class of 2011 suggest, the cyclical nature of recruiting.

Missouri’s players come from 10 states and two countries — from Rochester, Mich.; to Fontana, Wis.; to Fort Collins, Colo.; to Glendale, Ariz. Blitz has cultivated pipelines from Dallas and Chicago — four Tigers hail from both areas — but also has scoured all of North America. Alysha Bonnick, the Tigers’ all-conference forward, grew up in North Gower, Ontario. Starting midfielder Dominique Richardson is from Fullerton, Calif.

Blitz said he searches first within the borders.

“It’s cyclical for all the sports,” Blitz said. “We all, as coaches, just go where the best players are. … First and foremost, if Missouri kids are the best players in the country, we’re going to go after them. But we try not to have that filter. Obviously, you want to have Missouri kids, and, I can’t comment on future classes, but I think you’ll see that.”

He did with next year’s class. Missouri’s three in-state commitments include Lauren Flynn, a striker for St. Joseph’s Academy, and two of the nation’s top recruits from Kansas City. Lee’s Summit North goalie Caroline Stanley and midfielder Kaysie Clark of Liberty are members of the Under-17 National Team, while Clark was recently named a Parade High School All-American.

Huw Williams, who coaches Stanley and Clark at KCFC in Kansas City, said Blitz is one of the most diligent recruiters he encounters.

“I actually talk to Bryan at least once a week,” Williams said. “He’s one of those guys who’s very proactive, like, ‘Am I missing anybody?’ And the girls on our team, Casey Clark and Caroline Stanley, he’ll call to check on both of them once a week.”

Blitz knows he can’t appease everybody. Like all coaches, he’s missed on blue-chip recruits such as Lee’s Summit’s Morgan Marlborough, a sophomore at Nebraska who trained under Williams at KCFC and is leading the Big 12 in scoring for the second straight season. He also knows different players fit into different systems.

John Schneider, who coaches Flynn at Scott Gallagher in St. Louis, enjoys working with Blitz and suggests Missouri to athletes he believes will embrace the Tigers’ gritty, pressing system. But he said not all players are cut out for that style.

“There are good players I would not recommend to go there,” he said. “Bryan is a great guy but also a very demanding guy.”

Blitz also understands there is more talent in Missouri than he can recruit. For instance, while Scott Gallagher lists nine players who have committed to a school in one of the six BCS conferences, few players are going to programs with more recent success than Missouri.

Other factors, such as the makeup of his roster and available scholarship money, also factor into recruiting decisions. Blitz said the mutual interest between Mautz and Missouri was strong when the O’Fallon native sought her release from SLU after her freshman year. But Blitz said he didn’t have enough scholarships available.

“There’s been good players, but we haven’t needed those positions at times,” Blitz said. “There’s been good defenders or goalkeepers or forwards, but for whatever reason, maybe it wasn’t the right fit or maybe the kids wanted to go out of state.”

Mallory Stipetich, a junior defender from Liberty, doesn’t understand the pull. She was recruited by schools as far away as California, but Missouri, where her mother was once a cheerleader, felt like home.

“It’s nice to have family around,” Stipetich said.

For her, that includes her team, where winning transcends geography.

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